Music always features heavily. Do you share the same taste in music as Alan Banks?
Yes. I think it would be hard to write enthusiastically about music I don’t like. We have our differences, of course. For example, I like country and western much more than Banks does, but he’s coming around to it bit by bit.

Was it always the intention to have musical influences feature so prominently down the years or has is evolved and grown over time with readers expecting it?
It has evolved over time because I found I enjoyed doing it so much. I started out wanting Banks to have very eclectic tastes, rather than being stuck on one thing, like jazz, or Wagner, and soon found there are no limits to eclecticism.

Which concert/performance would you (and Alan) place at the top of their “Wish I’d been there” list?
I would like to have seen Elvis Presley, preferably in his earlier days, but even the seventies Elvis would have done. I was a fan from a very early age. In fact, ‘Hound Dog’ was the first song I remember hearing, when I was about five or six. I kick myself now for not taking the one opportunity I had to see him. Shortly after I had moved to Canada and was living in Windsor, Elvis played Pontiac Stadium, just over the border in Detroit. I went to Detroit often enough for concerts, but in the mid seventies, I was far more likely to go and see the Grateful Dead than Elvis. But I wish I’d gone.
I could also kick myself for not going to see The Beatles when they came on tour to Leeds Odeon in 1963. I went into town with my father that day, and he took lots of photos of the fans crowding outside, and even of The Beatles themselves when they appeared on a balcony to wave. The photos themselves became famous, first published in the Yorkshire Evening and then as part of a Leeds in the Sixties exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery. But I should have gone. I saw lots of my favourite performers there—Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney, Helen Shapiro, Dusty Springfield, The Beach Boys, The Hollies, The Tremolos, The Spencer Davis Group and so on–but not The Beatles.
And finally, out of curiosity, I would love to have been present in January, 1841, at Franz Liszt’s recital at the King’s Head in Richmond, North Yorkshire, where I spend a good part of my time now. (Not the pub itself, just the general the area!) I haven’t been able to track down any reviews, but he was definitely there on one of his tours. Apparently he was quite the rock star in his day, and the women went wild for him. I was especially honoured when I did a music & story event with Eliza Carthy in the same room just a few years ago.

In a remote countryside lane in North Yorkshire, the body of a young girl is found, bruised and beaten, having apparently been thrown from a moving vehicle.

While DI Annie Cabbot investigates the circumstances in which a 14-year-old could possibly fall victim to such a crime, newly promoted Detective Superintendent Alan Banks is faced with a similar task – but the case Banks must investigate is as cold as they come.

Fifty years ago Linda Palmer was attacked by celebrity entertainer Danny Caxton, yet no investigation ever took place. Now Caxton stands accused at the centre of a historical abuse investigation and it’s Banks’s first task as superintendent to find out the truth.

While Annie struggles with a controversial case threatening to cause uproar in the local community, Banks must piece together decades-old evidence, and as each steps closer to uncovering the truth, they’ll unearth secrets much darker than they ever could have guessed . . .